Arts
Why I love blowing up worms
Grade: B+ War, as we all know, is hell. But if it involves small squeaky annelids blowing each-other up with…
The new Springsteen biopic is cringe
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is a biopic of ‘the boss’ starring Jeremy Allen White. It is not cradle to…
The best artist alive? Probably
Taking place every October in Regent’s Park, the Frieze fair is probably the biggest event in London’s art calendar. It…
The staggering beauty of Fra Angelico
In 1982, Pope John Paul II surprised a few people by beatifying Fra Angelico, the 15th-century Dominican friar from near…
A great comedy about a terrible sport
I’m trying to think of things I’m less interested in than American football. The plant-based food section? Taking up my…
The triumph of classical architecture
It is very hard to imagine the University of Oxford ever constructing a modernist building again. This is the significance…
Why was the 19th century so full of bigots and weirdos?
Da Vinci’s Laundry is based on an art world rumour. In 2017, Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ sold at Christie’s for $450…
A Magic Flute that will make you weep
English Touring Opera has begun its autumn season and the miracle isn’t so much that they’re touring at all these…
Fionn Regan has gone method Worzel Gummidge
Watching the Mercury Music Prize on television last week, I remembered that Fionn Regan’s debut album, The End Of History,…
La de da
Everyone who has read the work of the late great Thomas Bernhard, the Austrian novelist forever spitting his fellow Austrians…
Tracy Letts’s magic touch
Tracy Letts’s Mary Page Marlowe is a biographical portrait of an emotionally damaged mother struggling with romantic and family problems.…
Is there anything menopausal women can’t do?
Is there anything menopausal women can’t do (on television)? Last Sunday, as a couple of them were still working on…
Very pretty and pretty gruesome: Ballad of a Small Player reviewed
Ballad of a Small Player opens with Lord Doyle, played by Colin Farrell, hiding from security in his trashed casino…
In defence of Mick Hucknall
Before Simply Red came on stage at the Greenwich peninsula’s enormodome, the screens showed a clip of a very young…
Handel was derided in his own time – particularly by us, for which belated apologies
Here’s a patriotic thought for you: baroque opera, as we now know it, was made in Britain. Sure, there are…
A remarkable insight into Le Carré’s working methods
When Richard Ovenden of the Bodleian Library wrote to John le Carré asking if the writer would leave it his…
Condoms in 18th-century painting
Waldemar Januszczak and Bendor Grosvenor’s art podcast has returned after nearly five years. It is, says Januszczak, ‘the podcast they…
The dying art of costume design
At the receptionist’s desk in Cosprop’s studio and costume warehouse, a former Kwik Fit garage, the sloping bleakness of Holloway…
The rustle of underwear
If ever there was gorgeous chocolate-box theatre it’s this magnificently staged production of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca directed by Anne-Louise…
Excruciating: Netflix’s House of Guinness reviewed
First the surprising news: not a single one of the four Guinness siblings in 1868 Dublin is black; and only…
The death of cinéma vérité
Oh, how we lived. Or, how we thought we lived. Despite the numerous criticisms levelled at the BBC on a…
An album that proves Martinu was one of the great quartet composers
Grade: A Bohuslav Martinu was a patchy composer; worse, he was also a prolific one, meaning that if you dip…
Has Taylor Swift been reading The Spectator?
The Last Dinner Party received quite the critical backlash when they arrived amid much fanfare in 2023. Posh, precocious and…
The mind-bendingly creative works of Louis Couperin
The French lutenist Charles Fleury, Sieur de Blancrocher, is one of those unfortunate historical figures who are chiefly remembered because…
What does it feel like to perform the same show 355 times in one year?
I have my routine down to a science. At 6.59, I’m sitting in the stairwell, typing on my laptop or…
